Sandhills

I've been across western Nebraska by various routes over the decades, but I still have powerful memories of a north-south drive through the Sandhills sometime late in college (which was in New Hampshire, so how I wound up driving N-S in Nebraska says something of how I spent my time off).  This trip I drove a large rectangular loop - in both the evening and the early morning - when the light was low and perfect.

The Sandhills are a very large stabilized (for now) dune field that sits shallowly on the Ogallala Aquifer, which occasionally peaks through to form lakes and extensive wetlands.  It's mainly grassland - grazed, but only locally plowed or irrigated.  It may actually look something like it did 200 years ago - something one can't say for a vast majority of the Great Plains.